Many small business owners, such as providers of consumer products and services, and other advertisers, herein collectively referred to as “merchants”, offer marketing devices, such as promotional and/or discount offers, price guarantee offers, bundled offers, coupons, and vouchers, to consumers in an effort to attract and/or encourage business.
Traditionally, marketing devices were distributed in “hard-copy”, or printed, form, by various means, including, but not limited to: by mail; in newspapers; in magazines; in flyers and inserts; at store fronts and/or product displays; and/or as attachments to store receipts (i.e., printed on the back of a receipt or appended to a receipt).
More recently, marketing devices have been offered/distributed as “electronic media based marketing devices” using electronic means such as, but not limited to: networks of computing systems, including public networks such as the Internet; mobile networks and computing systems, such as smart phones; various advertising/coupon web-sites; e-mail; electronic coupon attachments to electronic receipts; and electronic coupon attachments to transactional data, such as, but not limited to, transactional data from, and/or displayed by, banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions.
Even more recently, “mobile coupons” have become increasingly popular. Using mobile coupons, a marketing device is provided that is a type of electronic media based marketing device made available to, and/or delivered to, a consumer via a display device on one or more mobile computing systems, or other mobile devices. In many instances, once a mobile coupon is made available, or delivered, to the consumer via the display device, the mobile coupon is also presented to a seller of products and/or services, and/or is used, by displaying the mobile coupon to a merchant via the display device on the one or more mobile computing systems, or other mobile devices, or by another form of data transfer.
In addition, in many parts of the world, marketing devices, including mobile coupons, are now distributed via non-Internet based communication channels, such as communications networks supporting Short Message Service (SMS) communications and/or in SMS messages.
In order to most efficiently use their marketing and/or advertising resources, merchants, and particularly small business owners/operators, typically want to ensure their marketing devices are distributed to “real potential customers”, i.e., consumers who are most likely to be motivated by the marketing device to make a purchase of a given product and/or service.
In addition, consumers typically want to ensure that any marketing devices they receive are useful to the consumer and are made available to the consumer in a timely manner, i.e., when the consumer is likely to want to use the marketing device.
One way to theoretically help ensure marketing devices are relevant to the receiving consumers is to generate and distribute marketing devices based, at least in part, on the location of the consumer and the proximity of the merchant offering the marketing device. However, location based marketing devices selected based on the physical distance between the current, or expected, location of the consumer and the merchant offering the marketing device will not necessarily yield the desired result. That is to say, location based marketing devices selected for, and distributed to, a given consumer based simply on the merchant's location being physically closest to the consumer's actual, or presumed, location, with little, or no, further analysis of the subject product or service, the consumer's current state, or the logistics of the situation/purchase, will often result in the distribution of marketing devices that are not relevant to the consumer's actual situation.
While location based marketing devices that emphasize only the physical distance between the location of the consumer and the merchant are arguably better than blindly mass distributed marketing devices, the strict, and undue, emphasis on the physical distance between the location of the consumer and the merchant offering the marketing devices is often far too simplistic an approach. Indeed, recent research has shown that merely using proximity of a consumer to a merchant as a means to filter out “relevant marketing devices” from “irrelevant marketing devices” all too often results in the distribution of irrelevant, and unwanted, marketing devices to consumers, and some likely customers not receiving relevant marketing devices.
For instance, some currently available location based marketing devices, and the current simplistic and binary methods for determining location relevancy, often ignore several other important location relevancy/refinement factors, such as, but not limited to, the type of item the consumer is looking to purchase. Recent research has found that if a consumer is looking for a durable item, such as a washing machine or a refrigerator, then marketing devices from merchants in closest neighboring areas are not particularly more relevant to that consumer than marketing devices from merchants in outlying areas and, therefore, other factors may be more useful in determining the most relevant marketing devices. However, on the contrary, if a consumer is looking for a non-durable, semi-durable, or a consumable item, such as groceries, clothing, or disposable household items, research has found that marketing devices from merchants in areas closest to the consumer are much more important and relevant to that consumer.
Another example of how some currently available location based marketing devices, and the current simplistic and binary methods for determining location relevancy, ignore other important location relevancy/refinement factors, is the fact that currently available location based marketing devices typically fail to take into account the present state of the consumer, such as whether the current location of the consumer indicates the consumer is out shopping or at home. If a consumer is not yet shopping, i.e., is at home or at work, then marketing devices from merchants in any reasonable proximity to the consumer, or even in a neighboring suburb/city, are typically relevant to that consumer. However, if the consumer is already in a shopping area, such as a mall, then marketing devices from merchants in that immediate shopping area are far more relevant to the consumer.
Another example of how some currently available location based marketing devices, and the current simplistic and binary methods for determining location relevancy, ignore other important location relevancy/refinement factors, is the fact that currently available location based marketing devices typically fail to take into account any personal data associated with the consumer themselves. For instance, assume a consumer is a woman and sends a search request for marketing devices associated with shoes. Using current methods for determining location based marketing devices, a marketing device for a men's clothing and shoe store, which happens to be the closet shoe selling merchant to the consumer who offers a marketing device, could be sent back in response to the search request. Clearly this would be an irrelevant marketing device with respect to this consumer.
Another example of how some currently available location based marketing devices, and the current simplistic and binary methods for determining location relevancy, ignore other important location relevancy/refinement factors, is the fact that currently available location based marketing devices typically fail to take into account logistical factors, such as, but not limited to, the availability of public transportation to a merchant's location, traffic between the consumer's location and merchant's location, the day of the week associated with the consumer's search and/or the terms of the marketing device, or the time of day associated with the consumer's search and/or the terms of the marketing device. However, all these factors can play an important role, if not determinative role, in assessing the relevancy of a location based marketing device to a given consumer.
As discussed above, currently available location based marketing devices, and the current simplistic and binary methods for determining location relevancy, often ignore other important location relevancy/refinement factors. As a result, currently, many marketing devices are distributed to consumers that have no real interest in the marketing devices and many consumers who would have interest in marketing devices do not receive the most relevant marketing devices. This is clearly not ideal for either the merchants associated with the marketing devices or the consumers. In addition, the situation described above has the potential to cause a consumer, who is tired of receiving irrelevant marketing devices, to unsubscribe and leave the marketing device management and distribution system altogether; again this is not a good result for either the merchants associated with the marketing devices or the consumers.